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The perpetrators of the recent spate of
financial frauds in the USA acted with callous disregard for both their
employees and shareholders - not to mention other stakeholders. Psychologists
have often remote-diagnosed them as "malignant, pathological
narcissists".

Narcissists are driven by the need to uphold
and maintain a false self - a concocted, grandiose, and demanding psychological
construct typical of the narcissistic personality disorder. The false self is
projected to the world in order to garner "narcissistic supply" -
adulation, admiration, or even notoriety and infamy. Any kind of attention is
usually deemed by narcissists to be preferable to obscurity.

The false self is suffused with fantasies of
perfection, grandeur, brilliance, infallibility, immunity, significance,
omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. To be a narcissist is to be
convinced of a great, inevitable personal destiny. The narcissist is
preoccupied with ideal love, the construction of brilliant, revolutionary
scientific theories, the composition or authoring or painting of the greatest
work of art, the founding of a new school of thought, the attainment of
fabulous wealth, the reshaping of a nation or a conglomerate, and so on. The
narcissist never sets realistic goals to himself. He is forever preoccupied
with fantasies of uniqueness, record breaking, or breathtaking achievements.
His verbosity reflects this propensity.

Reality is, naturally, quite different and
this gives rise to a "grandiosity gap". The demands of the false self
are never satisfied by the narcissist's accomplishments, standing, wealth, clout,
sexual prowess, or knowledge. The narcissist's grandiosity and sense of
entitlement are equally incommensurate with his achievements.

To bridge the grandiosity gap, the malignant
(pathological) narcissist resorts to shortcuts. These very often lead to fraud.

The narcissist cares only about appearances.
What matters to him are the facade of wealth and its attendant social status
and narcissistic supply. Witness the travestied extravagance of Tyco's Denis
Kozlowski. Media attention only exacerbates the narcissist's addiction and
makes it incumbent on him to go to ever-wilder extremes to secure uninterrupted
supply from this source.

The narcissist lacks empathy - the ability to
put himself in other people's shoes. He does not recognize boundaries - personal,
corporate, or legal. Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments,
extensions, objects unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his
pursuit of narcissistic gratification.

This makes the narcissist perniciously
exploitative. He uses, abuses, devalues, and discards even his nearest and
dearest in the most chilling manner. The narcissist is utility- driven,
obsessed with his overwhelming need to reduce his anxiety and regulate his
labile sense of self-worth by securing a constant supply of his drug -
attention. American executives acted without compunction when they raided their
employees' pension funds - as did Robert Maxwell a generation earlier in
Britain.

The narcissist is convinced of his
superiority - cerebral or physical. To his mind, he is a Gulliver hamstrung by
a horde of narrow-minded and envious Lilliputians. The dotcom "new
economy" was infested with "visionaries" with a contemptuous
attitude towards the mundane: profits, business cycles, conservative
economists, doubtful journalists, and cautious analysts.

Yet, deep inside, the narcissist is painfully
aware of his addiction to others - their attention, admiration, applause, and
affirmation. He despises himself for being thus dependent. He hates people the
same way a drug addict hates his pusher. He wishes to "put them in their
place", humiliate them, demonstrate to them how inadequate and imperfect
they are in comparison to his regal self and how little he craves or needs
them.

The narcissist regards himself as one would
an expensive present, a gift to his company, to his family, to his neighbours,
to his colleagues, to his country. This firm conviction of his inflated
importance makes him feel entitled to special treatment, special favors,
special outcomes, concessions, subservience, immediate gratification,
obsequiousness, and lenience. It also makes him feel immune to mortal laws and
somehow divinely protected and insulated from the inevitable consequences of
his deeds and misdeeds.

The self-destructive narcissist plays the
role of the "bad guy" (or "bad girl"). But even this is
within the traditional social roles cartoonishly exaggerated by the narcissist
to attract attention. Men are likely to emphasise intellect, power, aggression,
money, or social status. Narcissistic women are likely to emphasise body,
looks, charm, sexuality, feminine "traits", homemaking, children and
childrearing.

Punishing the wayward narcissist is a
veritable catch-22.

A jail term is useless as a deterrent if it
only serves to focus attention on the narcissist. Being infamous is second best
to being famous - and far preferable to being ignored. The only way to
effectively punish a narcissist is to withhold narcissistic supply from him and
thus to prevent him from becoming a notorious celebrity.

Given a sufficient amount of media exposure,
book contracts, talk shows, lectures, and public attention - the narcissist may
even consider the whole grisly affair to be emotionally rewarding. To the
narcissist, freedom, wealth, social status, family, vocation - are all means to
an end. And the end is attention. If he can secure attention by being the big
bad wolf - the narcissist unhesitatingly transforms himself into one. Lord
Archer, for instance, seems to be positively basking in the media circus
provoked by his prison diaries.

The narcissist does not victimise, plunder,
terrorise and abuse others in a cold, calculating manner. He does so offhandedly,
as a manifestation of his genuine character. To be truly "guilty" one
needs to intend, to deliberate, to contemplate one's choices and then to choose
one's acts. The narcissist does none of these.

Thus, punishment breeds in him surprise, hurt
and seething anger. The narcissist is stunned by society's insistence that he
should be held accountable for his deeds and penalized accordingly. He feels
wronged, baffled, injured, the victim of bias, discrimination and injustice. He
rebels and rages.

Depending upon the pervasiveness of his
magical thinking, the narcissist may feel besieged by overwhelming powers,
forces cosmic and intrinsically ominous. He may develop compulsive rites to
fend off this "bad", unwarranted, persecutory influences.

The narcissist, very much the infantile
outcome of stunted personal development, engages in magical thinking. He feels
omnipotent, that there is nothing he couldn't do or achieve if only he sets his
mind to it. He feels omniscient - he rarely admits to ignorance and regards his
intuitions and intellect as founts of objective data.

Thus, narcissists are haughtily convinced
that introspection is a more important and more efficient (not to mention
easier to accomplish) method of obtaining knowledge than the systematic study
of outside sources of information in accordance with strict and tedious
curricula. Narcissists are "inspired" and they despise hamstrung
technocrats.

To some extent, they feel omnipresent because
they are either famous or about to become famous or because their product is
selling or is being manufactured globally. Deeply immersed in their delusions
of grandeur, they firmly believe that their acts have - or will have - a great
influence not only on their firm, but on their country, or even on Mankind.
Having mastered the manipulation of their human environment - they are
convinced that they will always "get away with it". They develop
hubris and a false sense of immunity.

Narcissistic immunity is the (erroneous)
feeling, harboured by the narcissist, that he is impervious to the consequences
of his actions, that he will never be effected by the results of his own
decisions, opinions, beliefs, deeds and misdeeds, acts, inaction, or membership
of certain groups, that he is above reproach and punishment, that, magically,
he is protected and will miraculously be saved at the last moment. Hence the
audacity, simplicity, and transparency of some of the fraud and corporate
looting in the 1990's. Narcissists rarely bother to cover their traces, so
great is their disdain and conviction that they are above mortal laws and
wherewithal.

What are the sources of this unrealistic
appraisal of situations and events?

The false self is a childish response to
abuse and trauma. Abuse is not limited to sexual molestation or beatings.
Smothering, doting, pampering, over-indulgence, treating the child as an
extension of the parent, not respecting the child's boundaries, and burdening
the child with excessive expectations are also forms of abuse.

The child reacts by constructing false self
that is possessed of everything it needs in order to prevail: unlimited and
instantaneously available Harry Potter-like powers and wisdom. The false self,
this Superman, is indifferent to abuse and punishment. This way, the child's
true self is shielded from the toddler's harsh reality.

This artificial, maladaptive separation
between a vulnerable (but not punishable) true self and a punishable (but
invulnerable) false self is an effective mechanism. It isolates the child from
the unjust, capricious, emotionally dangerous world that he occupies. But, at
the same time, it fosters in him a false sense of "nothing can happen to
me, because I am not here, I am not available to be punished, hence I am immune
to punishment".

The comfort of false immunity is also yielded
by the narcissist's sense of entitlement. In his grandiose delusions, the
narcissist is sui generis, a gift to humanity, a precious, fragile, object.
Moreover, the narcissist is convinced both that this uniqueness is immediately
discernible - and that it gives him special rights. The narcissist feels that
he is protected by some cosmological law pertaining to "endangered
species".

He is convinced that his future contribution
to others - his firm, his country, humanity - should and does exempt him from
the mundane: daily chores, boring jobs, recurrent tasks, personal exertion,
orderly investment of resources and efforts, laws and regulations, social
conventions, and so on.

The narcissist is entitled to a "special
treatment": high living standards, constant and immediate catering to his
needs, the eradication of any friction with the humdrum and the routine, an
all-engulfing absolution of his sins, fast track privileges (to higher
education, or in his encounters with bureaucracies, for instance). Punishment,
trusts the narcissist, is for ordinary people, where no great loss to humanity
is involved.

Narcissists are possessed of inordinate
abilities to charm, to convince, to seduce, and to persuade. Many of them are
gifted orators and intellectually endowed. Many of them work in in politics,
the media, fashion, show business, the arts, medicine, or business, and serve
as religious leaders.

By virtue of their standing in the community,
their charisma, or their ability to find the willing scapegoats, they do get
exempted many times. Having recurrently "got away with it" - they
develop a theory of personal immunity, founded upon some kind of societal and
even cosmic "order" in which certain people are above punishment.

But there is a fourth, simpler, explanation.
The narcissist lacks self-awareness. Divorced from his true self, unable to
empathise (to understand what it is like to be someone else), unwilling to
constrain his actions to cater to the feelings and needs of others - the
narcissist is in a constant dreamlike state.

To the narcissist, his life is unreal, like
watching an autonomously unfolding movie. The narcissist is a mere spectator,
mildly interested, greatly entertained at times. He does not "own"
his actions. He, therefore, cannot understand why he should be punished and
when he is, he feels grossly wronged.

So convinced is the narcissist that he is
destined to great things - that he refuses to accept setbacks, failures and
punishments. He regards them as temporary, as the outcomes of someone else's
errors, as part of the future mythology of his rise to
power/brilliance/wealth/ideal love, etc. Being punished is a diversion of his
precious energy and resources from the all-important task of fulfilling his
mission in life.

The narcissist is pathologically envious of
people and believes that they are equally envious of him. He is paranoid, on
guard, ready to fend off an imminent attack. A punishment to the narcissist is
a major surprise and a nuisance but it also validates his suspicion that he is
being persecuted. It proves to him that strong forces are arrayed against him.

He tells himself that people, envious of his
achievements and humiliated by them, are out to get him. He constitutes a
threat to the accepted order. When required to pay for his misdeeds, the
narcissist is always disdainful and bitter and feels misunderstood by his
inferiors.

Cooked books, corporate fraud, bending the
(GAAP or other) rules, sweeping problems under the carpet, over-promising,
making grandiose claims (the "vision thing") - are hallmarks of a
narcissist in action. When social cues and norms encourage such behaviour
rather than inhibit it - in other words, when such behaviour elicits abundant
narcissistic supply - the pattern is reinforced and become entrenched and
rigid. Even when circumstances change, the narcissist finds it difficult to
adapt, shed his routines, and replace them with new ones. He is trapped in his
past success. He becomes a swindler.

But pathological narcissism is not an
isolated phenomenon. It is embedded in our contemporary culture. The West's is
a narcissistic civilization. It upholds narcissistic values and penalizes
alternative value-systems. From an early age, children are taught to avoid
self-criticism, to deceive themselves regarding their capacities and
attainments, to feel entitled, and to exploit others.

As Lilian Katz observed in her important
paper, "Distinctions between Self-Esteem and Narcissism: Implications for
Practice", published by the Educational Resources Information Center, the
line between enhancing self-esteem and fostering narcissism is often blurred by
educators and parents.

Both Christopher Lasch in "The Culture
of Narcissism" and Theodore Millon in his books about personality
disorders, singled out American society as narcissistic. Litigiousness may be
the flip side of an inane sense of entitlement. Consumerism is built on this
common and communal lie of "I can do anything I want and possess everything
I desire if I only apply myself to it" and on the pathological envy it
fosters.

Not surprisingly, narcissistic disorders are
more common among men than among women. This may be because narcissism conforms
to masculine social mores and to the prevailing ethos of capitalism. Ambition,
achievements, hierarchy, ruthlessness, drive - are both social values and
narcissistic male traits. Social thinkers like the aforementioned Lasch
speculated that modern American culture - a self-centred one - increases the
rate of incidence of the narcissistic personality disorder.

Otto Kernberg, a notable scholar of
personality disorders, confirmed Lasch's intuition: "Society can make
serious psychological abnormalities, which already exist in some percentage of
the population, seem to be at least superficially appropriate."

In their book "Personality
Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and Roger Davis state,
as a matter of fact, that pathological narcissism was once the preserve of
"the royal and the wealthy" and that it "seems to have gained
prominence only in the late twentieth century". Narcissism, according to
them, may be associated with "higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs
... Individuals in less advantaged nations .. are too busy trying (to survive)
... to be arrogant and grandiose".

They - like Lasch before them - attribute
pathological narcissism to "a society that stresses individualism and
self-gratification at the expense of community, namely the United States."
They assert that the disorder is more prevalent among certain professions with
"star power" or respect. "In an individualistic culture, the
narcissist is 'God's gift to the world'. In a collectivist society, the
narcissist is 'God's gift to the collective."

Millon quotes Warren and Caponi's "The
Role of Culture in the Development of Narcissistic Personality Disorders in
America, Japan and Denmark":

"Individualistic narcissistic structures
of self-regard (in individualistic societies) ... are rather self-contained and
independent ... (In collectivist cultures) narcissistic configurations of the
we-self ... denote self-esteem derived from strong identification with the
reputation and honor of the family, groups, and others in hierarchical
relationships."

Still, there are malignant narcissists among
subsistence farmers in Africa, nomads in the Sinai desert, day laborers in east
Europe, and intellectuals and socialites in Manhattan. Malignant narcissism is
all-pervasive and independent of culture and society. It is true, though, that
the way pathological narcissism manifests and is experienced is
dependent on the particulars of societies and cultures.

In some cultures, it is encouraged, in others
suppressed. In some societies it is channeled against minorities - in others it
is tainted with paranoia. In collectivist societies, it may be projected onto
the collective, in individualistic societies, it is an individual's trait.

Yet, can families, organizations, ethnic
groups, churches, and even whole nations be safely described as
"narcissistic" or "pathologically self-absorbed"? Can we
talk about a "corporate culture of narcissism"?

Human collectives - states, firms,
households, institutions, political parties, cliques, bands - acquire a life
and a character all their own. The longer the association or affiliation of the
members, the more cohesive and conformist the inner dynamics of the group, the
more persecutory or numerous its enemies, competitors, or adversaries, the more
intensive the physical and emotional experiences of the individuals it is
comprised of, the stronger the bonds of locale, language, and history - the
more rigorous might an assertion of a common pathology be.

Such an all-pervasive and extensive pathology
manifests itself in the behavior of each and every member. It is a defining -
though often implicit or underlying - mental structure. It has explanatory and
predictive powers. It is recurrent and invariable - a pattern of conduct
melding distorted cognition and stunted emotions. And it is often vehemently
denied.

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